"The tepid
film
never catches
fire and does not tell us what we didn't already know about Roswell."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Writers Jeremy Paul Kagan, Paul Davids and Arthur Kopit
base the
made-for-TV movie Roswell on the book UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin
Randle
and Donald Schmitt. Director Jeremy Paul Kagan ("Heroes"/"The Big
Fix"/"The
Chosen") keeps the true story of the July, 1947 crash landing of an
unidentified
aircraft in the New Mexico desert, outside of Roswell, as a mystery
story
and the filmmaker asserts there was a cover-up by the government to
keep
it one.

Jesse Marcel (Kyle MacLachlan) is a retired Major, who
returns to
the Roswell air force base for a reunion of members of the famed 509th
Bomb Wing of the 8th USAAF 30 years after the mysterious events that
led
many observers to believe that aliens had landed even though the
authorities
squashed such talk. Jesse is still intrigued by what he believes he saw
and uses his visit to investigate what he still thinks was a UFO crash.
At the time of the crash, Jesse and his commanding officer at the air
base
in Roswell, Col. Blanchard (John M. Jackson), believed the debris that
was found outside of Roswell at the Mac Brazel ranch could have been an
extraterrestrial space craft. Their discovery made headlines all over
the
world. But the next day Gen. Ramey (Matthew Falson) arrived from D.C
and
ordered both Col. Blanchard and Maj. Jesse Marcel to change their story
from a "flying saucer" to an army weather balloon that crashed in the
desert,
thereby humiliating Jesse by making him look like a fool that he could
make such a big mistake.

Though handling a still hot-button controversial subject,
the tepid
film never catches fire and does not tell us what we didn't already
know
about Roswell. Its best audience would be UFO conspiracy buffs, who
rightly
or wrongly can't let go of this story.

You won't learn from this film exactly what happened in
Roswell during
the summer of 1947, as those in charge of finding out what happened,
then
as well as now, have kept a lid on things. What the film does reveal is
Jesse finally feels satisfied that he got to the truth about what
happened
and will die in peace in 1986 knowing he was right in what he assumed
was
an alien craft. What really happened at Roswell in 1947 we may never
know
since we can't count on the US government and military to tell us the
truth.
The government, despite some 300+ witnesses who have since come forward
to note a UFO experience, has denied it was an alien landing and claim
in 1994 through the US Air Force released statement that the witnesses
mistook what they saw. The government statement tells us what the
witnesses
really saw was the US Air force's Operation Mogul in action and its
high
altitude balloons drop of dummies in parachutes to see if humans can
survive
those high parachutes drops in the future. If you believe the
government,
then you might be a good candidate to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.